Water Agency’s Shift Could Facilitate Building of Newhall Ranch

In the timeless battle over water in Southern California, it represented a mere droplet in a murky legal sea.

But the ripple effect from a little-noticed policy shift could help smooth the way for eventual construction of the largest development ever approved in Los Angeles County.

Although it remains a party to a lawsuit that has stalled the massive Newhall Ranch development in the Santa Clarita Valley, a Ventura County water district has aligned itself with the developer on a key component of the project’s plan to guarantee water for the 60,000 people who would live there after its completion, 30 years from now.

The water district now agrees that the developer should be allowed to divert and store storm water from nearby Castaic Creek.

The shift by the United Water Conservation District occurred in March, as a Kern County judge was weighing arguments in a lawsuit filed by Ventura County against Los Angeles County. The suit sought to block progress on Newhall Ranch, a 21,600-home community in Los Angeles County on the Ventura County line.

The judge sided with Ventura County, ordering a halt to Newhall Ranch until the developer could satisfy the judge on six key issues, one of them water availability.

In his ruling, Judge Roger D. Randall said: “The project can only meet its water demands if it also utilizes flood flow from Castaic Creek.”

Randall did not consider United Water’s policy shift in his ruling because it had not been part of the official record used by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors in approving the development.

It remains unclear whether the state will approve the diversion plan, whether the plan will satisfy the judge or whether the developer can alleviate the judge’s concerns on the other five points and restart the project. But any plan that might help guarantee water availability is seen as crucial to overcoming the legal barriers facing the Newhall Land and Farming Co.

In explaining the shift, Dana L. Wisehart, United Water’s general manager, said: “We have no objection to their getting the water they need.”

The lawsuit, she said, had been filed to force Newhall Ranch to prove that it had enough water before houses were built. Even if the developer uses the creek water, Wisehart said, she believes additional water must be secured to meet the project’s eventual demand.

Ventura County fears that if more ground water were pumped in the Santa Clarita Valley, the water level in its aquifer would be lowered, a claim that water suppliers in the valley adamantly deny. There is no scientific evidence to support either position.

“I don’t believe that Ventura County will ever see any decrease in water supply in the Santa Clara River,” which recharges the county’s aquifer, said Robert J. DiPrimio, president of Valencia Water Co., which would supply water to Newhall Ranch and is wholly owned by Newhall Land and Farming. “They are just trying to stop the project.”

In addition to an answer to the water question, Judge Randall also required further study of the project’s environmental impacts on area wildlife and plants and the river corridor and on traffic congestion in Ventura County.

The state dammed Castaic Creek in the 1970s to create Castaic Lake, and gave downstream property owners the rights to some of the excess rainwater held in the lake. The state’s agreement with four property owners, including Newhall Ranch and United Water, requires that the water be released into Castaic Creek, where it would eventually flow into the ocean. It is the release into Castaic Creek that the two owners now want to change.

Newhall Ranch is seeking permission to divert and possibly store its share of the overflow in Castaic Lake; United Water has asked to divert its portion to Pyramid Lake for storage.

“We didn’t consider it controversial. We considered it good water management,” Wisehart said about United Water’s decision to join Newhall Ranch’s request.

That decision was made by United Water’s elected board of directors at a public meeting in March, shortly after Wisehart was elevated to the top post.

Wisehart stressed United Water’s self-interest in seeking state approval to amend the 1978 water agreement. “We were opposed if we couldn’t get water out of Pyramid,” she said.

In an e-mail from Europe, Ventura County Supervisor John Flynn said Friday that he was unaware of United Water’s decision and he opposes any change in the water agreement. “I doubt the state Department of Water Resources will agree to a change. I am against a change. I do not think that it will happen,” he wrote.

But Kathy Long, another Ventura County supervisor, was supportive. “This is a plus-plus for Ventura County,” she said, because the county will also get an additional water supply.

Environmentalist Lynne Plambeck said United Water’s new strategy would have only short-term benefits. After completion of the development, she said, Newhall Ranch would take more ground water from Ventura County than United Water’s diversion request would provide.

“If it enables Newhall Ranch, then it’s not a reasonable request,” said Plambeck, a spokeswoman for the environmental group Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, or SCOPE, and an elected member of the Newhall County Water District board of directors.

United Water’s support eliminates a reluctance among state water officials to grant Newhall Land and Farming’s request without the implicit backing of the creek’s other downstream water users, state water officials said.

“The department does not want to get between local water agencies,” said Dan Flory, chief of the State Water Project analysis office.

There is no timeline for state consideration of the proposal, Flory added.

In opposing the proposed development, lawyers for Ventura County and United Water had argued that creek flow is not a realistic water source. Not only had Newhall Land and Farming failed to win state approval to divert the water, but the company had also proposed a storage method that the judge found scientifically unproven.

Company officials said about a year of additional studies, planning and public hearings will be necessary before they ask the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to approve a supplemental environmental impact report. The lawsuit, which pitted Ventura County against Los Angeles County, was moved to Kern County to avoid conflicts of interest.

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Proposed Water Diversion

Officials of a Ventura County water district and developers of proposed housing at Newhall Ranch have joined in supporting a plan to store Castaic Creek water. The water district’s share would be stored in Pyramid Lake, Newhall’s in Castaic Lake. The plan has drawn together forces that had clashed over water supplies for Newhall Ranch, the region’s largest proposed housing development.